Christian Contemplative Spiritual Journey
A brief definition of the contemplative spiritual journey: a personal and spiritual development process in faith of sufferingly and joyfully dying to the ‘old, wounded, false self’’, and being spiritually healed and transformed into our “True Heart Self”, Loving communion with-in-God, with the grace of God's Spirit of Love, Wisdom and Living Presence in our inner and outer lives....Contemplative spirituality is in our Christian tradition, especially in the writings and lives of St. Paul, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, Fr. Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Fr. Bede Griffiths, Fr. Thomas Berry, Fr. John Main, Matthew Fox, Fr. Thomas Keating, Fr. Richard Rohr, Bernadette Roberts, Julie Redstone, Beatrice Bruteau, Beverly Lanzetta, Ilia Delio...Some contemplatives have been compassionate servers of humanity in social justice (Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr. ...). Of course, there have also been many contemplatives in the past and present from other major spiritual traditions and indigenous/native peoples (e.g.: Black Elk, Mahatma Ghandi, Thich Nhat Hahn, Dalai Lama,...) and many humbly unknown human beings who have lived lives of quiet, Loving service to others. Developing the spiritual discipline of daily centering / contemplative prayer is a very important part of the Christian contemplative spiritual journey and our spiritual transformation. On our Christian spiritual journey toward transformative union with-in God and being-becoming loving co-creators with God's creation/evolution, "our ongoing conversion involves such fruits as compassion, humility, healing, spontaneous creativity, just reconciliation, peace and joy" (Tilden Edwards, Spiritual Friend: Reclaiming the Gift of Spiritual Direction, p.234).
"God calls human persons to union with Godself (our 'Loving Trinitarian Absolute') and with one another in Christ..." - Fr. Thomas Merton
”Universal/Cosmic Christ is the Eternal Loving Oneness of God’s Divine Nature and God’s evolving cosmic creation, including our own evolving human nature/consciousness....”
The power of silence, the letting go of thoughts, and resting in the Lord in one's center are keys to prayer and our transformation. - St. John of the Cross
"...being-becoming Present (with an open and quiet heart/mind) in God's Living/Loving Presence..."
”Be still and know that I Am Love....”
”Being-Becoming Thy Loving Oneness, & Eternal Presence....”
”I am Awareness of God’s Living/Loving/Light(Truth/Wisdom), Unfolding Presence in the Oneness of Eternal Now...” (God is All in All Eternally)
"We are in God and God whom we do not see is in us." - Julian of Norwich, Christian female mystic (1342-1416)
”The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew all things in God and God in all things.” - Mechtild of Magdeburg
"You have made us for wholeness, O Lord and our hearts are restless until they find their wholeness in You." - St. Augustine
God says: "I am the sovereign goodness of all things. I am what makes you love. I am what makes you long and desire. This I am -
the endless fulfilling of all desires." - Julian of Norwich
”Lift up your hearts. Open your eyes to what is eternally real, the new creation, and seek the purity of heart that will open your eyes...know from your own heart from your own experience that you were created for infinite expansion of spirit.” - St. Benedict
”Though we are God’s sons and daughters, we do not realize it yet.”
“People who dwell in God, dwell in the eternal now. There, people can never grow old. There, everything is present and everything is
new....every action of God is new and God makes all things new....God is the beginning and if we are united to God we become new again.” - Meister Eckhart
On solitude and silence: “We must learn an inner solitude, wherever or with whomsoever we may be. One must learn to penetrate things and find God there... When one has learned to let go and let be, then one is well disposed and is always in the right place whether in society or in solitude. Now one who is rightly disposed has God with one in actual fact in all places, just as much in the street and in the midst of many people as in church, or the desert, or a monastic cell.”
“There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence.” - Meister Eckhart
”She is but one, yet Wisdom can do all things and, herself unchanging, she renews all things. She enters holy souls, making them prophets and friends of God, for God loves those who live with Wisdom.” - Wisdom 7:27-28
”Be still, and you shall know that I am God.” - Psalm 46:11
”When you call to me and come and pray to me, I shall listen to you. When you search for me, you will find me; when you search wholeheartedly for me, I shall let you find me....” - Jeremiah 29: 12-13
”The divine presence has always been with us, but we think it is absent. That thought is the monumental illusion of the human condition. The spiritual journey is designed to heal it.” - Fr. Thomas Keating
”Silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still and to rest in God.” - Fr. Thomas Keating
”Interior silence is the perfect seed bed for divine love to take root. In the Gospel the Lord speaks about a mustard seed as a symbol of divine love. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it has an enormous capacity for growth. Divine love has the power to grow and transform us. The purpose of contemplative prayer is to facilitate the process of inner transformation.” - Fr. Thomas Keating
”Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy...a higher kind of listening...a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void.” - Thomas Merton
”In silence the conscious thinking mind comes to a stop, and the invisible presence and power are given the opportunity to function. If we really believe that the kingdom of God is within, we should be willing to leave the world until such time as we can reach, touch, and respond to the Godself within.
Silence is the secret of the power of the (indigenous) Hawaiians. Through silence they communicated with nature. The language of silence salutes the divinity in all things. Everything that has life has something of value to share with us, providing we are ready to experience it.” - Nana Veary
”The language of religion...is the language of mysticism: I am completely and utterly in God, I cannot fall out of God, I am imperishable.
”Who shall separate us from the love of God?” we can the ask with Paul the mystic: “neither death nor life, height nor depth, neither present nor future” (Romans 8:35 and 38). - Dorothea Soelle
”Each person must therefore discover this Center in him/her-self, this Ground of his/her being, this Law of his/her life. It is hidden in the depths of every soul, waiting to be discovered. It is the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price. It is the one thing which is necessary, which can satisfy all our desires and answer all our needs....It is the original paradise from which we have all come.”
- Bede Griffiths
“When I speak of darkness, I am referring to a lack of knowing. It is a lack of knowing that includes everything you do not know or else that you have forgotten, whatever is altogether dark for you because you do not see it with your spiritual eye. And for this reason it is not called a cloud of the air, but rather a cloud of unknowing that is between you and your God.”
- The Cloud of Unknowing
(anonymous English monk, fourteenth century)
"The sweet and living knowledge that she says he taught her is mystical theology, the secret knowledge of God that spiritual persons call contemplation. This knowledge is very delightful because it is knowledge through love. Love is the master of this knowledge and what makes it wholly agreeable.
The principal property involved in calling contemplation a "ladder" is its being a science of love, which ... is an infused, loving knowledge, that both illumines and enamors the soul, elevating it step by step unto God its creator."
- St. John of the Cross
"My ultimate purpose, in all that I have written, is but to say this one simple thing to my readers - whether they know it or not, whether
they reflect on it or not, human beings are always and everywhere, in all times and places, oriented and directed to that ineffable mystery we call God."
- Karl Rahner
”It’s God in you that loves God.
It’s God through you that recognizes God.
It’s God for you that assures you it is all finally and forever okay.
Now you’re living inside the Trinitarian flow.
You are already home free!”
- Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation
”God’s Loving Presence with-in, through, among us
in the Sacred Silence
in the Present of our Sacred Breathing
Is our True Self/Communion/ Joy/Beauty
with-in the Freedom/Truth/Peace/Justice of
God’s on-going Creative Process and
Eternal Love/Light/Life/Oneness....”
"Because we are created in the image of God, our physical breath is a created, immanent image of the uncreated, transcendent breath (Life) of God. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God, the breath within our breath. The Spirit animates our life as our breath breathes in us, from the moment of birth until the instant of death: "Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being" (Genesis 2:7). The Spirit of God, the experience that Christ gives to his followers as the animating force of their prayer, breathes in us, within everything we do in prayer and life. We are usually not aware of the Spirit in us, just as we are usually not aware of our breath. Scripture invites us to greater awareness: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you." (1 Corinthians 3:16)."
-David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God
”We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet expectancy; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be...Interior silence is one of the most strengthening and affirming of human experiences. There is nothing more affirming, in fact, than the experience of God’s presence. That revelation says as nothing else can, “You are a good person. I created you and I love you.”...The divine light of faith is totally available to the degree that we consent and surrender ourselves to its presence and action within us. It heals the wounds of a lifetime and brings us to transforming union, empowering us to enter Christ’s redemptive program, first by the healing of our own deep wounds, and then by sharing in the healing of others.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating
”Contemplative prayer...is the opening of heart and mind — our whole being — to God beyond thoughts, words, and emotions. Moved by God’s sustaining grace, we open our awareness to God, who we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing — closer than consciousness itself. Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a relationship initiated by God and leading, if we consent, to divine union.... ‘the narrow way that leads to Love/Light/Life/Peace....’ “
— Fr. Thomas Keating
”The contemplative state is established when contemplative prayer moves from being an experience or series of experiences to an abiding state of consciousness. The contemplative state enables one to rest and act at the same time because one is rooted in the source of both rest and action.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating
“Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a conversion initiated by God and leading, if we consent to divine union. One’s way of seeing reality changes in this process. A restructuring of consciousness takes place which empowers one tp perceive, relate and respond to everyday life with increasing sensitivity to the Divine Presence in, through and beyond everything that happens.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating¡
”This Presence is immense, yet so humble; awe inspiring, yet so gentle; limitless, yet so intimate, tender and personal.... This Presence is healing, strengthening, refreshing.... A door opens within me, but from the other side. I seem to have tasted before the mysterious sweetness of this enveloping, permeating Presence. It is both emptiness and fullness at once.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating
”One of the things that prayer, as it deepens, will affect is our intuition of the oneness of the human race, and, indeed, the oneness of all creation. As one moves into his/her inmost being, we come into contact with what is the inmost being of everyone else. Although each of us retains his/her own unique personhood, we are necessarily associated with the God-person, who has taken the whole human family to him/herself in such a way as to be the inmost reality of each individual member of it. And so, when one is praying in the spirit, in his/her inmost being, one is praying, so to speak, in everybody else’s spirit.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating
” Bonding with others takes place as the Love of the Spirit is poured forth in our hearts. We feel that we belong to our community, to the human family, to the cosmos. We feel that our prayer is not just a privatized journey but is having a significant effect in the world.
We can pour into the world the Love that the Spirit gives us in prayer.”
—Fr. Thomas Keating
”The essential message of Christianity is that God is present in the depths of each human being. That is why we must learn humility.
That is why we must learn silence; because we must enter those depths of our self to encounter the otherness of God and in that encounter, to discover our essential self in union with God.”
— Fr. John Main
“In the silence and stillness of Contemplative prayer/living is a continuous breakthrough into the present moment, into the present moment of God (‘the eternal now of God’).”
—Fr. John Main
”The Gift of Knowledge is an intuition into the fact that only God can satisfy our deepest longing for happiness...The Spirit presents us with the true source of happiness, which is the experience of God as intimate and always present.”
—Fr. Thomas Keating
”The experience of being loved by God enables to accept our false self as it is, and then to let go of it and journey to our True Self. The
inward journey to our True Self is the way to Divine Love....”
—Fr. Thomas Keating
”Faith alone can perceive God triumphing in the midst of human suffering and bringing about the reign of divine love.”
—Fr. Thomas Keating
"God calls human persons to union with Godself (our 'Loving Trinitarian Absolute') and with one another in Christ..." - Fr. Thomas Merton
”Universal/Cosmic Christ is the Eternal Loving Oneness of God’s Divine Nature and God’s evolving cosmic creation, including our own evolving human nature/consciousness....”
The power of silence, the letting go of thoughts, and resting in the Lord in one's center are keys to prayer and our transformation. - St. John of the Cross
"...being-becoming Present (with an open and quiet heart/mind) in God's Living/Loving Presence..."
”Be still and know that I Am Love....”
”Being-Becoming Thy Loving Oneness, & Eternal Presence....”
”I am Awareness of God’s Living/Loving/Light(Truth/Wisdom), Unfolding Presence in the Oneness of Eternal Now...” (God is All in All Eternally)
"We are in God and God whom we do not see is in us." - Julian of Norwich, Christian female mystic (1342-1416)
”The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew all things in God and God in all things.” - Mechtild of Magdeburg
"You have made us for wholeness, O Lord and our hearts are restless until they find their wholeness in You." - St. Augustine
God says: "I am the sovereign goodness of all things. I am what makes you love. I am what makes you long and desire. This I am -
the endless fulfilling of all desires." - Julian of Norwich
”Lift up your hearts. Open your eyes to what is eternally real, the new creation, and seek the purity of heart that will open your eyes...know from your own heart from your own experience that you were created for infinite expansion of spirit.” - St. Benedict
”Though we are God’s sons and daughters, we do not realize it yet.”
“People who dwell in God, dwell in the eternal now. There, people can never grow old. There, everything is present and everything is
new....every action of God is new and God makes all things new....God is the beginning and if we are united to God we become new again.” - Meister Eckhart
On solitude and silence: “We must learn an inner solitude, wherever or with whomsoever we may be. One must learn to penetrate things and find God there... When one has learned to let go and let be, then one is well disposed and is always in the right place whether in society or in solitude. Now one who is rightly disposed has God with one in actual fact in all places, just as much in the street and in the midst of many people as in church, or the desert, or a monastic cell.”
“There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence.” - Meister Eckhart
”She is but one, yet Wisdom can do all things and, herself unchanging, she renews all things. She enters holy souls, making them prophets and friends of God, for God loves those who live with Wisdom.” - Wisdom 7:27-28
”Be still, and you shall know that I am God.” - Psalm 46:11
”When you call to me and come and pray to me, I shall listen to you. When you search for me, you will find me; when you search wholeheartedly for me, I shall let you find me....” - Jeremiah 29: 12-13
”The divine presence has always been with us, but we think it is absent. That thought is the monumental illusion of the human condition. The spiritual journey is designed to heal it.” - Fr. Thomas Keating
”Silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still and to rest in God.” - Fr. Thomas Keating
”Interior silence is the perfect seed bed for divine love to take root. In the Gospel the Lord speaks about a mustard seed as a symbol of divine love. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it has an enormous capacity for growth. Divine love has the power to grow and transform us. The purpose of contemplative prayer is to facilitate the process of inner transformation.” - Fr. Thomas Keating
”Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy...a higher kind of listening...a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void.” - Thomas Merton
”In silence the conscious thinking mind comes to a stop, and the invisible presence and power are given the opportunity to function. If we really believe that the kingdom of God is within, we should be willing to leave the world until such time as we can reach, touch, and respond to the Godself within.
Silence is the secret of the power of the (indigenous) Hawaiians. Through silence they communicated with nature. The language of silence salutes the divinity in all things. Everything that has life has something of value to share with us, providing we are ready to experience it.” - Nana Veary
”The language of religion...is the language of mysticism: I am completely and utterly in God, I cannot fall out of God, I am imperishable.
”Who shall separate us from the love of God?” we can the ask with Paul the mystic: “neither death nor life, height nor depth, neither present nor future” (Romans 8:35 and 38). - Dorothea Soelle
”Each person must therefore discover this Center in him/her-self, this Ground of his/her being, this Law of his/her life. It is hidden in the depths of every soul, waiting to be discovered. It is the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price. It is the one thing which is necessary, which can satisfy all our desires and answer all our needs....It is the original paradise from which we have all come.”
- Bede Griffiths
“When I speak of darkness, I am referring to a lack of knowing. It is a lack of knowing that includes everything you do not know or else that you have forgotten, whatever is altogether dark for you because you do not see it with your spiritual eye. And for this reason it is not called a cloud of the air, but rather a cloud of unknowing that is between you and your God.”
- The Cloud of Unknowing
(anonymous English monk, fourteenth century)
"The sweet and living knowledge that she says he taught her is mystical theology, the secret knowledge of God that spiritual persons call contemplation. This knowledge is very delightful because it is knowledge through love. Love is the master of this knowledge and what makes it wholly agreeable.
The principal property involved in calling contemplation a "ladder" is its being a science of love, which ... is an infused, loving knowledge, that both illumines and enamors the soul, elevating it step by step unto God its creator."
- St. John of the Cross
"My ultimate purpose, in all that I have written, is but to say this one simple thing to my readers - whether they know it or not, whether
they reflect on it or not, human beings are always and everywhere, in all times and places, oriented and directed to that ineffable mystery we call God."
- Karl Rahner
”It’s God in you that loves God.
It’s God through you that recognizes God.
It’s God for you that assures you it is all finally and forever okay.
Now you’re living inside the Trinitarian flow.
You are already home free!”
- Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation
”God’s Loving Presence with-in, through, among us
in the Sacred Silence
in the Present of our Sacred Breathing
Is our True Self/Communion/ Joy/Beauty
with-in the Freedom/Truth/Peace/Justice of
God’s on-going Creative Process and
Eternal Love/Light/Life/Oneness....”
"Because we are created in the image of God, our physical breath is a created, immanent image of the uncreated, transcendent breath (Life) of God. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God, the breath within our breath. The Spirit animates our life as our breath breathes in us, from the moment of birth until the instant of death: "Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being" (Genesis 2:7). The Spirit of God, the experience that Christ gives to his followers as the animating force of their prayer, breathes in us, within everything we do in prayer and life. We are usually not aware of the Spirit in us, just as we are usually not aware of our breath. Scripture invites us to greater awareness: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you." (1 Corinthians 3:16)."
-David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God
”We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet expectancy; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be...Interior silence is one of the most strengthening and affirming of human experiences. There is nothing more affirming, in fact, than the experience of God’s presence. That revelation says as nothing else can, “You are a good person. I created you and I love you.”...The divine light of faith is totally available to the degree that we consent and surrender ourselves to its presence and action within us. It heals the wounds of a lifetime and brings us to transforming union, empowering us to enter Christ’s redemptive program, first by the healing of our own deep wounds, and then by sharing in the healing of others.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating
”Contemplative prayer...is the opening of heart and mind — our whole being — to God beyond thoughts, words, and emotions. Moved by God’s sustaining grace, we open our awareness to God, who we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing — closer than consciousness itself. Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a relationship initiated by God and leading, if we consent, to divine union.... ‘the narrow way that leads to Love/Light/Life/Peace....’ “
— Fr. Thomas Keating
”The contemplative state is established when contemplative prayer moves from being an experience or series of experiences to an abiding state of consciousness. The contemplative state enables one to rest and act at the same time because one is rooted in the source of both rest and action.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating
“Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a conversion initiated by God and leading, if we consent to divine union. One’s way of seeing reality changes in this process. A restructuring of consciousness takes place which empowers one tp perceive, relate and respond to everyday life with increasing sensitivity to the Divine Presence in, through and beyond everything that happens.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating¡
”This Presence is immense, yet so humble; awe inspiring, yet so gentle; limitless, yet so intimate, tender and personal.... This Presence is healing, strengthening, refreshing.... A door opens within me, but from the other side. I seem to have tasted before the mysterious sweetness of this enveloping, permeating Presence. It is both emptiness and fullness at once.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating
”One of the things that prayer, as it deepens, will affect is our intuition of the oneness of the human race, and, indeed, the oneness of all creation. As one moves into his/her inmost being, we come into contact with what is the inmost being of everyone else. Although each of us retains his/her own unique personhood, we are necessarily associated with the God-person, who has taken the whole human family to him/herself in such a way as to be the inmost reality of each individual member of it. And so, when one is praying in the spirit, in his/her inmost being, one is praying, so to speak, in everybody else’s spirit.”
— Fr. Thomas Keating
” Bonding with others takes place as the Love of the Spirit is poured forth in our hearts. We feel that we belong to our community, to the human family, to the cosmos. We feel that our prayer is not just a privatized journey but is having a significant effect in the world.
We can pour into the world the Love that the Spirit gives us in prayer.”
—Fr. Thomas Keating
”The essential message of Christianity is that God is present in the depths of each human being. That is why we must learn humility.
That is why we must learn silence; because we must enter those depths of our self to encounter the otherness of God and in that encounter, to discover our essential self in union with God.”
— Fr. John Main
“In the silence and stillness of Contemplative prayer/living is a continuous breakthrough into the present moment, into the present moment of God (‘the eternal now of God’).”
—Fr. John Main
”The Gift of Knowledge is an intuition into the fact that only God can satisfy our deepest longing for happiness...The Spirit presents us with the true source of happiness, which is the experience of God as intimate and always present.”
—Fr. Thomas Keating
”The experience of being loved by God enables to accept our false self as it is, and then to let go of it and journey to our True Self. The
inward journey to our True Self is the way to Divine Love....”
—Fr. Thomas Keating
”Faith alone can perceive God triumphing in the midst of human suffering and bringing about the reign of divine love.”
—Fr. Thomas Keating
"Do not fear that you will lose your identity in this process of surrender (with faith and trust into God's Living/Loving Presence with-in us), for each of us is a soul and no soul that has been created can ever lose its individuality. It is only to become brighter and more aware of ('our true self in Christ') that the process of surrender is chosen, that the One may become many and the many become One... forever held in the Mind and Heart of God that holds in Divine Love the vastness of the universe..." - Julie Redstone
SI “ By virtue of Love is the lover transformed in the Beloved and the Beloved transformed in the lover, and the like unto hard iron which so assumeth the color, heat, virtue, and form of the the fire that it almost turneth into fire, so doth the soul, united with God through the perfect grace of Divine Love, almost become divine and transformed in God." - Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)
"...the spiritual path is the medium through which we personally unravel the hidden workings of the universe. Although each path is individually unique, the pattern of spiritual life transcends the person and engages the seeker in the dynamics of a larger truth. The spiritual path is one that cannot be learned about. It can only be experienced. As such, life experience is the crucible in which we aflame the pattern of divine nature...open our whole being to the inflow of Divine Wisdom and Love...Ultimately, we will become One."
"You are a multi-dimensional spirit-body, birthed from the Divine Heart, living on Earth. Only you and God-in-you knows who you are.
Pray for the passion to seek your true nature, to love unconditionally and be empty of self."
"Each moment in life can be a moment of union with God, if you perceive Love and the Divine Heart in everything. Why? Because we already are."
"Many religious creation stories attest that life came into being through a total self-giving of divinity. If we want to join in the flow of life, we also have to give the false self away. This mutual process of self-giving is the path of the heart. As we re-enact the original self-emptying, our souls participate in the unification of consciousness. This is what it means to be on a spiritual path. What we consider to be painful - letting go of the ego - is a beautiful gift of Infinite Mercy guiding us to our true nature. As God empties divinity into our humanity, we must empty our humanity into the divine. In this mutual self-emptying, divinity descends into the world as we empty our humanity and ascend into the divine. This capacity of the self to empty - to truly sacrifice for something greater than self - dignifies the human spirit.
All authentic and profound spirituality seeks to ennoble the self. The notion of emptying of the ego empties our "concept" of humanness. We sacrifice self-identity for the divine, for the greater good. We offer unto the ultimate our limited self, in gratitude for the gift of the immeasurable. This, then, is our true mystical path. This is our way of life. It's beautiful. Even physical death is another expression of divinity because it is the ultimate self-emptying possible as a bodily form on Earth. We not only die every moment to self-identity, we not only die every day to personality, but we ultimately relinquish precious human life itself. Even this is a gift of participating in the Universal process. Both living and dying are essential."
"Union is serenity. It is the moment of dissolution into the ocean of peace...All that can be hoped is that as you study the path of the heart, and let it guide your being, you will become drawn into the inner divine journey. Rapture and joy are gifts of divinity...once tasted, the remembrance guides the soul to truth. The interior longing is calling you to something splendorous, to something unknown. It is a journey that demands nothing less than the totality of being. Perhaps few will heed the call. But for all humanity, the way has Universal implications..."
- Beverly Lanzetta
"Integrity means wholeness. Meditation (daily centering/contemplative prayer) is a way that bridges every part of our day, all our experience and all the dimensions of our being, into harmony...It means devoting time generously to what is the most important fact in life, that God is and that the Spirit of God (Divine Love/Wisdom/Life) dwells in our hearts...It is the way beyond the personal dividedness (both inner and outer) and anxiety from which we suffer as a result of our denial of God and our separation from the Spirit. Meditation proves itself, through faithful practice, as a way to deep peace and joy. It takes us across the bridge of sadness that arises from the feeing of separation. The ego arises in separateness and when the ego is transcended we realize our unity with God."
“Our lives are not only busy, they are usually noisy. But if our life is to be charged with meaning, to have depth and to be a true growth in consciousness, we have to be rooted in silence, rooted in the spirit, in the mystery whose depth can never be plumbed and whose meaning is found only in the consummation of union. We are each called to enter with wonder into the mystery with our whole being, in the total immediacy of the present moment which is the eternal moment of God. To be touched with wonder is to be made reverent and so to know in the absolute certainty that belongs to our experience that the energy of creation, the power of Love, dwells in the human heart in silence and in the stillness of pure consciousness.”
- Fr. John Main, The Present Christ
”If our life is rooted in Christ, rooted in in His/Her Love and the conscious knowledge of His/Her Love, then we need have no anxiety about regulating our action (Living Freely in His/Her Spirit). Our action will always spring from and be informed and shaped by that Love (Holy Spirit of Love/Light/Life/Peace). Indeed, the more active we are, the more important it is that our action springs from and is grounded in contemplation; knowing who we are by being who we are. That we are rooted and founded in Christ, the (ongoing) Resurrection of God, is Christian self-knowledge (Unitive Life in Christ through the Holy Spirit).”
-Fr. John Main
”We surrender to the attraction of Interior silence, tranquility, and peace. We do not try to feel anything. Without effort, without trying,
we sink into this Presence, to forget self, and to rest in the Ultimate Mystery. This Presence is immense, yet so humble; awe-inspiring,
yet so gentle; limitless, yet so intimate, tender and personal. I know that I am known....”
"...the contemplative dimension is the heart and soul of every religion. It initiates the movement into higher states of consciousness...our understanding of the Ultimate Reality and hence of ourselves and other people, and indeed of all created reality. This is the God that is manifesting who 'Godself' is at every moment, in and through us and through all creation. For human beings, it is the most daunting challenge there is -- the challenge of becoming fully human. For to become fully human is to become fully divine."
"Diviine Love has the power to grow and to transform us. The purpose of contemplative prayer is facilitate the process of inner transformation."
”We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet expectancy; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be.”
”Interior silence is one of the most strengthening and affirming of human experiences. There is nothing more affirming, in fact, than the experience of God’s Presence. That revelation says as nothing else can, “You are a good person. I created you and I Love you.” Divine Love brings us into being in the fullest sense of the word. It heals the negative feelings we have about ourselves.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Christ (Jesus) in his passion is the greatest teacher of who God is, Sheer humility. Total selflessness. Absolute service. Unconditional love. The essential meaning of the Incarnation is that this Love is totally available. Centering Prayer is simply a humble method of trying to access that infinite goodness by letting go of ourselves. Consent to God’s presence and action symbolized by the sacred word/breathing is nothing else than self-surrender and trust... we are being healed of our emotional wounds and the wounds we may have inflicted on our conscience. Through moments of interior resurrection there may come a breakthrough into permanent resurrection as the false self finally falls away, giving us the habitual Freedom of the children of God.
Bonding with others takes place as the Love of the Spirit is poured forth in our hearts. We feel that we belong to our community, to the human family, to the cosmos. We feel at home in the universe. We feel that our prayer is not just a privatized journey but is having a significant effect in the world. We can pour into the world the Love that the Spirit gives us in prayer....”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”The Word of God was always present beyond time. In the incarnation, he became present in time. He enfolds us, therefore, both within the temporal sphere and beyond it, at one and the same time. As the bride in the Song of Solomon said, “O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me!” (Song of Sol. 2:6). With the two arms of his human and divine natures, he enfolds us in the mystery of the incarnation in an incredibly strong embrace.
There are those who know Christ beyond time as “the true light that enlightens everyone” (John 1:9). We must bring them the good news of Christ inside of time, so that all true seekers of God may experience his full embrace. However, we Christians must not cling too closely to the Christ inside of time. Rather, we must allow him to bring us to the knowledge of himself beyond time... For we too have come from the bosom of the Father and must find our home there. Christ in his/her divine being is present in your heart, in mine, and in that of everyone, waiting to be resurrected there, so that Christ can share with us the Divine Life and Love that circulates eternally in the Trinity.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
"Letting go is at the heart of Centering prayer. As you let go, you open into God, unfold toward others, expand into life. Letting go frees you from tight grip of self, from the trap of obsessive mind, from the contraction of self-will. Practicing the active attitude of letting go establishes you on the contemplative path. As contemplation comes alive within you, learning the more receptive attitude of letting be allows the divine life to gradually become your life. As you practice deep trust and let everything be just as it is, in God, you participate more and more in the divine life itself. As Centering prayer deepens, letting go yields to letting be - being in God's Being...And over time, letting go and letting be are commingled in your contemplative practice; there is little distinction between what you are doing and the way God is being in you...at some point, your own effort yields to God's presence and action...Letting be is a more refined movement of faith and trust...Everything has its fulfillment, in God...The attitude of letting be brings this new sense of God, this new freedom, this new sense of who you are, to life in you...Like gravity, God's life is an unseen energy of which you become aware when you let go and let be.
The contemplative attitude of letting go and letting be open you to God's nature, which is Love. Love frees you from attachment, transforms self-will into willingness, refines your own efforts to let go into Christ's gentle surrender within you. God's Love invites your surrender...It is liberation...You are a vessel of God's compassion in the world as God lets go into life through you.
....this kind of Love is a gift, for it is the gift of God's Being. Letting go in contemplation is an act of Love that is drawn forth by God's Presence - by Love itself...letting God become the source of every moment, every relationship, and every activity..."
- David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God
”Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant
Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source.”
- Thomas Merton
“In the strict sense of the word, contemplation is a supernatural love and knowledge of God, simple and obscure, infused by (God) into the summit of the soul, giving the soul a direct and experimental contact with God. Mystical contemplation is an intuition of God born of pure love. It is a gift of God that absolutely transcends all the natural capacities of the soul and which no person can acquire by any effort of their own. But God gives it to the soul in proportion as it is clean and emptied of all affections for things outside of God...But the thing that must be stressed is that contemplation is itself a development and a perfection of pure love. The person who loves God realizes that the greatest joy, the perfection of beatitude is to love God and renounce all things for the sake of God alone — or for the sake of love alone because God is love. Contemplation is an intellectual experience of the fact that God is infinite Love, and that God has given Godself to us, and that from henceforth, love is all that matters.”
- Thomas Merton
"The contemplative life is, then, a matter of the greatest importance for modern man and is important to him in all that is most valuable in his ideal. Today more than ever, man in chains is seeking emancipation and liberty. His tragedy is that he seeks it by means that bring him into ever greater enslavement. But freedom is a spiritual thing. It is a sacred and religious reality. Its roots are not in man, but in God. For man's freedom, which makes him the image of God, is a participation in the freedom of God. Man is free insofar as he is like God. His struggle for freedom means, then, a struggle to renounce a false, illusory autonomy in order to become free beyond and above himself. In other words, for man to be free he must be delivered from himself. This means not that he must be delivered only from another like himself: for the tyranny of man over man is but the external expression of each man's enslavement to his own desires. For he who is the slave of his own desires necessarily exploits others in order to pay tribute to the tyrant within himself.
Before there can be any external freedom, man must learn to find the way to freedom within himself. For only then can he afford to relax his grip on others, and let them get away from him, because then he does not need their dependence. It is the contemplative who keeps this liberty alive in the world, and who shows others, obscurely and without realizing it, what real freedom means."
-Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation
”The deep “I” of the spirit, of solitude and of love, cannot be “had,” possessed, developed, perfected. It can only ‘be’, and ‘act’ according
to deep inner laws which are not of man’s contriving but which come from God ... This inner “I” who is always alone is always Universal:
for in this inmost “I” my own solitude meets the solitude of every other person and the solitude of God. Hence it is beyond division, beyond limitation, beyond selfish affirmation. It is only this inmost and solitary “I” that truly loves with the love and the Spirit of Christ. This “I” is Christ himself, living in us: and we, in Him, living in the Father.”
- Thomas Merton, “Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude,” in Disputed Questions
”The unfortunate tendency to equate the passivity of contemplation and mysticism with no action, hiding from the world, and a detachment from social change is not representative of the experience itself. True contemplation always overflows into creation — it becomes a creative act — and some of the greatest mystics/contemplatives have been advocates of profound social transformation. This emphasis on “being” over “doing” is one of degree, a shift in perspective that allows the person to move from a deeper center than the one normally demanded by the world. It is movement into a certain quality of life and a certain depth of being in order to attain the original freedom of discovering what Thomas Merton claimed was the “one thing really necessary — the quest for meaning and for love, the quest for (one’s) identity.” Concerned with discovery of our authentic self, contemplation is a journey that takes us from inequality equality, from fractured, temporal love to the wholeness of divine love, and from oppression to freedom. Those who have sought to track the wilderness of their heart have traveled along the inner way — through those states of knowing and feeling that are deeper than than rational thought and higher than ordinary consciousness to be directly related to the Divine Reality itself. For these many reasons, the contemplative takes apart our understandings of reality, our time-honored structures of meaning, and our economic and social constructions to lead us to the doorway of freedom and authenticity. It is liberation — if not an ultimate or final one, then the process of being liberated, of knowing and experiencing a liberatory state of consciousness.”
- Beverly Lanzetta, Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Teology
”If Jesus of Nazareth was the poor man from Galilee who was tortured to death, then Christ is that which cannot be destroyed, which came into the world with and lives through us in him. When I say Christ, I always think also of Francis of Assisi and Hildegard of Bingen
and Martin Luther King,Jr. and Ita Ford, the American nun who was murdered in El Salvador — as well as of all resistance fighters who are sitting in prison today. Christ is a name which for me expresses solidarity, hence suffering with, struggling with. Christ is the mysterious power which was in Jesus and which continues on and sometimes makes us into “fools in Christ,” who without hope of success and without any objective, share life with others.
....We must approach mysticism, which comes closest to overcoming the hierarchical masculine concept of God — as a thirst for real liberation....The mystical certainty that nothing can separate us from the Love of God grows when we ourselves become one with Love by placing ourselves, freely and without guarantee of success, on the side of Love.”
- “Soelle’s understanding of Christ is that of the Cosmic Christ, the presence of the “mysterious power which was in Jesus” and in all of us who struggle for justice and share solidarity with others in struggle....A healthy mysticism leads to “real liberation,” that is to prophetic action...The essence of the mystical experience is a “certainty that nothing can separate us from the Love of God.” This certainty builds courage and freedom and a willingness to love.” - Matthew Fox
- Dorothee Soelle
“If we as contemplatives are people who are growing in our realization of participation in divine life, then we are committed to giving up identifying the descriptive self (the old false self) and expanding in the faith and the daring to accept identification with they he true, transcendent self who dwells in God and in whom God dwells. When the sense of identity actually makes that shift in perspective, then the contemplative breakthrough or insight is present and full (spiritual transformation). Because of the nature of the divine life as creative agape, the contemplative life, which is a union with the divine life, must be creative. It is the nature and the vocation of the contemplative to create the world in the image of God, as an interchange of loving creative energies, and an ongoing process of ever- new improvisations.
”I am in God, and God is in me.”...We must avoid thinking of God as outside us, separate from us, and ourselves as outside and separate from God. The metaphysics of mutual indwelling outlaws this....Freedom on the personal, transcendent level, then, freedom that arises immediately and directly from the agent without provocation by the environment, is freedom that originates in the mutual interiority of God and the person. Realization of oneself as this kind of free agent is the necessary and proximate preparation for those energetic acts that will bond the free agents into a community “in Christ” and produce the new creation.”
- Beatrice Bruteau, The Grand Option: Personal Transformation and a New Creation
"I can find no place in St. John of the Cross where he affirms that God and the soul are in a process of becoming one, or that union is in the making; rather, he affirms that the whole of the contemplative movement is the process of realizing our oneness with God on ever-deepening levels. . As he says, man has numerous centers and unions, all of which must be passed through and left behind in order to reach the deepest, centermost union, which is the same union, but realized at its deepest level.
...In ending this discussion of contemplative union, I call attention to the fact that God does not communicate His/Her will to us on a conceptual basis. If He/She did, His/Her deepest union with human beings would be mental - a kind of union of intellects. But the center of our union is on a deeper level than mind or intellect. It is in the very center of existence, which I call the "will-to-God". This will is a silent faculty; it does not think, speak, remember, or form images. It is a silent power that takes its power from God, and in this silence our will runs into His/Her will, there to receive its life, strength - virtue. To know the will of God, we have only to remain silent, remain in the still center which automatically, without a single thought, is the perfect acceptance of the present moment, and what we are at the moment. Thus, all the intellectual searching, including the often agonizing efforts to ascertain the will of God, is nothing more than the refusal to accept the present moment, and our present state. The secret of the unitive life is the graced ability to live in this passive silence of wills, a silence which is always here now, and always one with God. The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication."
-Bernadette Roberts, The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center
”Needless to say, the popular notion that mystical experience and religion are separate entities is totally foreign to me. Christ’s revelation, “I am the Way and the Truth” allows no separation between the Way (means) and its end (Truth). Our end being transformation into Christ, when the Christian comes to the end of his journey there is the same truth he began with, only now unveiled in all its reality and marvel. The journey is one of gradual transformation, ever seeing and living more profoundly the Truth already with us. Truth was never somewhere beyond or down the road, it is always here and now, the means (Christ) being the end Itself.
-Bernadette Roberts, “Means-Ends” in The Christian Contemplative Journey: Essays on the Path
”The wholly extraordinary truth about the Christian proclamation is that each one of us, wherever we start from, is invited to open our consciousness fully to the consciousness of Christ, and, in that openness, to be taken out of ourselves, beyond ourselves, into that stream of conscious Love which flows between Christ and the Godself (our Trinitarian Creator). That is the personal destiny of each one of us and in that experience we are made completely and eternally real. The paradox is to know yourself for the first time because you are lost in God. That is what the gospel tells us, ‘Whoever would find their life must lose it.’ (Matt. 10:39).
Meditation/contemplation is a sure way of losing your own life, losing your own consciousness of yourself as an autonomously separate, separated entity. In losing it you find yourself at one with God and at one with all creation because you are now at last one with yourself. Your consciousness is no longer divided, no longer confused. It is simplified. It is one in God.”
- John Main, The Way of Unknowing
”Meister Eckhart promises that as our work for justice becomes more and grounded in our mystical roots of being-with-being, then true and profound creativity can happen...He says that the inner person “is hidden within us....Scripture calls this person a new person, a heavenly person, a young person, a friend, and a royal person”. He also teaches that the inner person is “the soil in which God has sown his likeness and image in which he sows the good seed, the roots of all wisdom, all skills, all virtues, all goodness — the
seed of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). The seed of the divine nature is God’s Son, the Word of God (Luke 8:11)”. This, for Eckhart, the true self or inner person is nothing less than the Cosmic Christ inside each of us. The inner person is “the good tree of which our Lord
says that it always bears good fruit and never evil fruit....All virtue of the just and every work of the just is nothing other than the Son
who is the New Creation — being born from the Father. In the depths of our being, where justice and work are done, we work one work and a New Creation with God”...We become co-creators and birthers of new creation.”
- Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ
”Thus, every created thing is a doorway to the Creator. Walt Whitman certainly knew this, and Thoreau and Emerson. Nature is a great teacher. We have come out of the womb of Mother Earth, which is an outer expression of the infinite Godhead. Infinity is within us and within all things, but not divided — eternally in Its perfect wholeness. Everything is within and perfectly connected to each other. It’s the perfect quantum hologram.
The question is: Is there a meta-theme that encapsulates all these experiences? The big theme and the transcendent theme is an ineffable oneness. Oneness.
If you have the ability to experience this state of consciousness, where you transcend space and time and materialism, you can encounter someone from another culture on Earth or another person from another planet or another realm, and rather than seeing them as “other,” you see them as “same.” This is very important, because the consciousness of ‘otherness’ is rooted in ignorance. Otherness is ignorance, whereas oneness is enlightenment.
If you can look at all beings and see that they’re awake and conscious, just as we are, you can experience your oneness with them. This is true no matter how different their intellect, body, emotional timbre, or fund of knowledge may be. All these things that we usually focus on are really ephemeral. If we look at the fact that they’re awake and experience that state of awareness where we see the transcendental value of the unbounded Mind, then we don’t see them as “alien” or “other.” And this is true whether you’re talking about someone from Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia or Alpha Centauri. It really doesn’t matter — because it’s another sentient, conscious being who has folded within his/her reality the awake-ness that is this universal aspect of our own selves.
If you can experience this state of Oneness, first of all, you can can communicate, which is very important. Secondly, you will feel that there is anything to be afraid of. Thirdly, you will see nothing to have a conflict over, because the things that are different really aren’t essential and aren’t important.
I think you could put the founders of every religion on Earth together and they’d have a grand old time, with, probably, no differences amongst them. It’s the divisions that men create, out of egotism, materialism, chauvinism, ignorance, hatred and stupidity, that cause the problems. The experience of Oneness (Divine Love) is the indispensable experience so needed at this time... It is the growing levels of Oneness... that grows perfect harmony, peace, and enlightenment.”
- Steven M. Greer, MD, Hidden Truth - Forbidden Knowledge
”Just as all of creation emanates from the fountain fullness of the Father and is modeled on the Son, creation finds its fulfillment in the Holy Spirit.
Thus, while all of creation realizes itself as image of the Trinity by growing to its fulfillment, it is the human person whose trinitarian image is Christ, who can lead creation to its fulfillment in God. Similarly, Teilhard held that the whole of natural evolution is coming under the influence of Christ, the physical center of the universe, through the free cooperation of human beings. God evolves the universe and brings it to its completion through the instrumentality of human beings. Thus, we are not called to relate to a God without a world. To love God we must also love what God loves. We are called to love this created world as God loves it. Both Teilhard and Bonaventure believed that the human person is called to be a “co-creator” — a cooperator with God in the transformation of the universe...”Therefore,it does matter what the human person does, for only through his or her action can one encounter God” (George Maloney, The Cosmic Christ: From Paul to Teilhard). We are to help transform this universe in Christ by seeing Christ in the universe and loving Christ at the heart of the universe.”
- Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution
”The mystic...has a consciousness of peace, compassion, tenderness, and forgiveness. As the mystic goes about the world urging all things toward unity, she or he contributes to evolution through a process of mystical convergence, seeing everything bound in a luminous web of love. Teilhard spoke of religious experience as having evolutionary significance through centration of the universe. What he means, Martin Laird writes, is that the human has the capacity to receive the Infinite: “The cultivation, development, and fulfillment of this capacity is a significant human contribution to cosmogenesis.” The fulfillment of this capacity centrates the rest of the universe because the unitive experience with God unites all spaces of separation in the outer universe by filling them with the presence of divine love. In this way, the human person becomes the vanguard of the evolving universe, drawn by Omega within and without. God-Omega exerts divine pull upon the universe through the human, who, as the evolutionary spearhead of the universe, has the greatest capacity to be pulled. The outer universe, therefore, is not the main impulse of evolution; it is the inner universe.
....The paths of the mystics show us that we have the capacity to be transformed into beings of new consciousness...as Beatrice Bruteau wrote: “The ‘I’ is God’s creative activity. It is not something in the past or something that is over and done with. It is God’s acting, God’s loving, in the present moment.” The “I” is the “now” of God’s creative love. We are not created and left to fend on our own. Our very existence is God’s own becoming—God rising in us. The truth of our selves lies in the mystery of God, as Catherine of Siena boldly proclaimed: “My me is God.” Thomas Merton wrote, “Our vocation is not simply to be but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our our own destiny....The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him.” To find God, we must look no further
than within ourselves, since God is within, “more inward than my inmost self,” as Augustine eloquently wrote.
....Teilhard held an integral connection between mysticism and evolution and thought that mysticism secures what is needed for the future. Mysticism is the most intense spiritual energy and thus the most intense energy of centration. The awakening of the mystic to the presence of the Sacred is the beginning of a new vision of reality....
Teilhard connects the act of faith with the centrating function of the human in the cosmos. The inner act of faith and the transformation of consciousness shape the outer movements of the mystic. According to Laird, “Far from escaping the evolutionary structures of the world, the mystic refines those structures. Through divinization the mystic has become a doorway through which Christ-Omega enters and transforms the world in the Divine Milieu.” This “inner-outer” transformation is the basis of human evolution and cosmic personalization. In other words, only inner transformation can escape outer cosmic entropy and thus centrate energy on higher levels of complexity. Through inner transformation, the mystic nurtures a zest for life by becoming more inwardly whole, creating wholeness in the outer world, and drawing others into new levels of community....”
Ilia Delio, A Hunger FOR Wholeness
"...the spiritual path is the medium through which we personally unravel the hidden workings of the universe. Although each path is individually unique, the pattern of spiritual life transcends the person and engages the seeker in the dynamics of a larger truth. The spiritual path is one that cannot be learned about. It can only be experienced. As such, life experience is the crucible in which we aflame the pattern of divine nature...open our whole being to the inflow of Divine Wisdom and Love...Ultimately, we will become One."
"You are a multi-dimensional spirit-body, birthed from the Divine Heart, living on Earth. Only you and God-in-you knows who you are.
Pray for the passion to seek your true nature, to love unconditionally and be empty of self."
"Each moment in life can be a moment of union with God, if you perceive Love and the Divine Heart in everything. Why? Because we already are."
"Many religious creation stories attest that life came into being through a total self-giving of divinity. If we want to join in the flow of life, we also have to give the false self away. This mutual process of self-giving is the path of the heart. As we re-enact the original self-emptying, our souls participate in the unification of consciousness. This is what it means to be on a spiritual path. What we consider to be painful - letting go of the ego - is a beautiful gift of Infinite Mercy guiding us to our true nature. As God empties divinity into our humanity, we must empty our humanity into the divine. In this mutual self-emptying, divinity descends into the world as we empty our humanity and ascend into the divine. This capacity of the self to empty - to truly sacrifice for something greater than self - dignifies the human spirit.
All authentic and profound spirituality seeks to ennoble the self. The notion of emptying of the ego empties our "concept" of humanness. We sacrifice self-identity for the divine, for the greater good. We offer unto the ultimate our limited self, in gratitude for the gift of the immeasurable. This, then, is our true mystical path. This is our way of life. It's beautiful. Even physical death is another expression of divinity because it is the ultimate self-emptying possible as a bodily form on Earth. We not only die every moment to self-identity, we not only die every day to personality, but we ultimately relinquish precious human life itself. Even this is a gift of participating in the Universal process. Both living and dying are essential."
"Union is serenity. It is the moment of dissolution into the ocean of peace...All that can be hoped is that as you study the path of the heart, and let it guide your being, you will become drawn into the inner divine journey. Rapture and joy are gifts of divinity...once tasted, the remembrance guides the soul to truth. The interior longing is calling you to something splendorous, to something unknown. It is a journey that demands nothing less than the totality of being. Perhaps few will heed the call. But for all humanity, the way has Universal implications..."
- Beverly Lanzetta
"Integrity means wholeness. Meditation (daily centering/contemplative prayer) is a way that bridges every part of our day, all our experience and all the dimensions of our being, into harmony...It means devoting time generously to what is the most important fact in life, that God is and that the Spirit of God (Divine Love/Wisdom/Life) dwells in our hearts...It is the way beyond the personal dividedness (both inner and outer) and anxiety from which we suffer as a result of our denial of God and our separation from the Spirit. Meditation proves itself, through faithful practice, as a way to deep peace and joy. It takes us across the bridge of sadness that arises from the feeing of separation. The ego arises in separateness and when the ego is transcended we realize our unity with God."
“Our lives are not only busy, they are usually noisy. But if our life is to be charged with meaning, to have depth and to be a true growth in consciousness, we have to be rooted in silence, rooted in the spirit, in the mystery whose depth can never be plumbed and whose meaning is found only in the consummation of union. We are each called to enter with wonder into the mystery with our whole being, in the total immediacy of the present moment which is the eternal moment of God. To be touched with wonder is to be made reverent and so to know in the absolute certainty that belongs to our experience that the energy of creation, the power of Love, dwells in the human heart in silence and in the stillness of pure consciousness.”
- Fr. John Main, The Present Christ
”If our life is rooted in Christ, rooted in in His/Her Love and the conscious knowledge of His/Her Love, then we need have no anxiety about regulating our action (Living Freely in His/Her Spirit). Our action will always spring from and be informed and shaped by that Love (Holy Spirit of Love/Light/Life/Peace). Indeed, the more active we are, the more important it is that our action springs from and is grounded in contemplation; knowing who we are by being who we are. That we are rooted and founded in Christ, the (ongoing) Resurrection of God, is Christian self-knowledge (Unitive Life in Christ through the Holy Spirit).”
-Fr. John Main
”We surrender to the attraction of Interior silence, tranquility, and peace. We do not try to feel anything. Without effort, without trying,
we sink into this Presence, to forget self, and to rest in the Ultimate Mystery. This Presence is immense, yet so humble; awe-inspiring,
yet so gentle; limitless, yet so intimate, tender and personal. I know that I am known....”
"...the contemplative dimension is the heart and soul of every religion. It initiates the movement into higher states of consciousness...our understanding of the Ultimate Reality and hence of ourselves and other people, and indeed of all created reality. This is the God that is manifesting who 'Godself' is at every moment, in and through us and through all creation. For human beings, it is the most daunting challenge there is -- the challenge of becoming fully human. For to become fully human is to become fully divine."
"Diviine Love has the power to grow and to transform us. The purpose of contemplative prayer is facilitate the process of inner transformation."
”We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet expectancy; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be.”
”Interior silence is one of the most strengthening and affirming of human experiences. There is nothing more affirming, in fact, than the experience of God’s Presence. That revelation says as nothing else can, “You are a good person. I created you and I Love you.” Divine Love brings us into being in the fullest sense of the word. It heals the negative feelings we have about ourselves.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Christ (Jesus) in his passion is the greatest teacher of who God is, Sheer humility. Total selflessness. Absolute service. Unconditional love. The essential meaning of the Incarnation is that this Love is totally available. Centering Prayer is simply a humble method of trying to access that infinite goodness by letting go of ourselves. Consent to God’s presence and action symbolized by the sacred word/breathing is nothing else than self-surrender and trust... we are being healed of our emotional wounds and the wounds we may have inflicted on our conscience. Through moments of interior resurrection there may come a breakthrough into permanent resurrection as the false self finally falls away, giving us the habitual Freedom of the children of God.
Bonding with others takes place as the Love of the Spirit is poured forth in our hearts. We feel that we belong to our community, to the human family, to the cosmos. We feel at home in the universe. We feel that our prayer is not just a privatized journey but is having a significant effect in the world. We can pour into the world the Love that the Spirit gives us in prayer....”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”The Word of God was always present beyond time. In the incarnation, he became present in time. He enfolds us, therefore, both within the temporal sphere and beyond it, at one and the same time. As the bride in the Song of Solomon said, “O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me!” (Song of Sol. 2:6). With the two arms of his human and divine natures, he enfolds us in the mystery of the incarnation in an incredibly strong embrace.
There are those who know Christ beyond time as “the true light that enlightens everyone” (John 1:9). We must bring them the good news of Christ inside of time, so that all true seekers of God may experience his full embrace. However, we Christians must not cling too closely to the Christ inside of time. Rather, we must allow him to bring us to the knowledge of himself beyond time... For we too have come from the bosom of the Father and must find our home there. Christ in his/her divine being is present in your heart, in mine, and in that of everyone, waiting to be resurrected there, so that Christ can share with us the Divine Life and Love that circulates eternally in the Trinity.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
"Letting go is at the heart of Centering prayer. As you let go, you open into God, unfold toward others, expand into life. Letting go frees you from tight grip of self, from the trap of obsessive mind, from the contraction of self-will. Practicing the active attitude of letting go establishes you on the contemplative path. As contemplation comes alive within you, learning the more receptive attitude of letting be allows the divine life to gradually become your life. As you practice deep trust and let everything be just as it is, in God, you participate more and more in the divine life itself. As Centering prayer deepens, letting go yields to letting be - being in God's Being...And over time, letting go and letting be are commingled in your contemplative practice; there is little distinction between what you are doing and the way God is being in you...at some point, your own effort yields to God's presence and action...Letting be is a more refined movement of faith and trust...Everything has its fulfillment, in God...The attitude of letting be brings this new sense of God, this new freedom, this new sense of who you are, to life in you...Like gravity, God's life is an unseen energy of which you become aware when you let go and let be.
The contemplative attitude of letting go and letting be open you to God's nature, which is Love. Love frees you from attachment, transforms self-will into willingness, refines your own efforts to let go into Christ's gentle surrender within you. God's Love invites your surrender...It is liberation...You are a vessel of God's compassion in the world as God lets go into life through you.
....this kind of Love is a gift, for it is the gift of God's Being. Letting go in contemplation is an act of Love that is drawn forth by God's Presence - by Love itself...letting God become the source of every moment, every relationship, and every activity..."
- David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God
”Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant
Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source.”
- Thomas Merton
“In the strict sense of the word, contemplation is a supernatural love and knowledge of God, simple and obscure, infused by (God) into the summit of the soul, giving the soul a direct and experimental contact with God. Mystical contemplation is an intuition of God born of pure love. It is a gift of God that absolutely transcends all the natural capacities of the soul and which no person can acquire by any effort of their own. But God gives it to the soul in proportion as it is clean and emptied of all affections for things outside of God...But the thing that must be stressed is that contemplation is itself a development and a perfection of pure love. The person who loves God realizes that the greatest joy, the perfection of beatitude is to love God and renounce all things for the sake of God alone — or for the sake of love alone because God is love. Contemplation is an intellectual experience of the fact that God is infinite Love, and that God has given Godself to us, and that from henceforth, love is all that matters.”
- Thomas Merton
"The contemplative life is, then, a matter of the greatest importance for modern man and is important to him in all that is most valuable in his ideal. Today more than ever, man in chains is seeking emancipation and liberty. His tragedy is that he seeks it by means that bring him into ever greater enslavement. But freedom is a spiritual thing. It is a sacred and religious reality. Its roots are not in man, but in God. For man's freedom, which makes him the image of God, is a participation in the freedom of God. Man is free insofar as he is like God. His struggle for freedom means, then, a struggle to renounce a false, illusory autonomy in order to become free beyond and above himself. In other words, for man to be free he must be delivered from himself. This means not that he must be delivered only from another like himself: for the tyranny of man over man is but the external expression of each man's enslavement to his own desires. For he who is the slave of his own desires necessarily exploits others in order to pay tribute to the tyrant within himself.
Before there can be any external freedom, man must learn to find the way to freedom within himself. For only then can he afford to relax his grip on others, and let them get away from him, because then he does not need their dependence. It is the contemplative who keeps this liberty alive in the world, and who shows others, obscurely and without realizing it, what real freedom means."
-Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation
”The deep “I” of the spirit, of solitude and of love, cannot be “had,” possessed, developed, perfected. It can only ‘be’, and ‘act’ according
to deep inner laws which are not of man’s contriving but which come from God ... This inner “I” who is always alone is always Universal:
for in this inmost “I” my own solitude meets the solitude of every other person and the solitude of God. Hence it is beyond division, beyond limitation, beyond selfish affirmation. It is only this inmost and solitary “I” that truly loves with the love and the Spirit of Christ. This “I” is Christ himself, living in us: and we, in Him, living in the Father.”
- Thomas Merton, “Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude,” in Disputed Questions
”The unfortunate tendency to equate the passivity of contemplation and mysticism with no action, hiding from the world, and a detachment from social change is not representative of the experience itself. True contemplation always overflows into creation — it becomes a creative act — and some of the greatest mystics/contemplatives have been advocates of profound social transformation. This emphasis on “being” over “doing” is one of degree, a shift in perspective that allows the person to move from a deeper center than the one normally demanded by the world. It is movement into a certain quality of life and a certain depth of being in order to attain the original freedom of discovering what Thomas Merton claimed was the “one thing really necessary — the quest for meaning and for love, the quest for (one’s) identity.” Concerned with discovery of our authentic self, contemplation is a journey that takes us from inequality equality, from fractured, temporal love to the wholeness of divine love, and from oppression to freedom. Those who have sought to track the wilderness of their heart have traveled along the inner way — through those states of knowing and feeling that are deeper than than rational thought and higher than ordinary consciousness to be directly related to the Divine Reality itself. For these many reasons, the contemplative takes apart our understandings of reality, our time-honored structures of meaning, and our economic and social constructions to lead us to the doorway of freedom and authenticity. It is liberation — if not an ultimate or final one, then the process of being liberated, of knowing and experiencing a liberatory state of consciousness.”
- Beverly Lanzetta, Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Teology
”If Jesus of Nazareth was the poor man from Galilee who was tortured to death, then Christ is that which cannot be destroyed, which came into the world with and lives through us in him. When I say Christ, I always think also of Francis of Assisi and Hildegard of Bingen
and Martin Luther King,Jr. and Ita Ford, the American nun who was murdered in El Salvador — as well as of all resistance fighters who are sitting in prison today. Christ is a name which for me expresses solidarity, hence suffering with, struggling with. Christ is the mysterious power which was in Jesus and which continues on and sometimes makes us into “fools in Christ,” who without hope of success and without any objective, share life with others.
....We must approach mysticism, which comes closest to overcoming the hierarchical masculine concept of God — as a thirst for real liberation....The mystical certainty that nothing can separate us from the Love of God grows when we ourselves become one with Love by placing ourselves, freely and without guarantee of success, on the side of Love.”
- “Soelle’s understanding of Christ is that of the Cosmic Christ, the presence of the “mysterious power which was in Jesus” and in all of us who struggle for justice and share solidarity with others in struggle....A healthy mysticism leads to “real liberation,” that is to prophetic action...The essence of the mystical experience is a “certainty that nothing can separate us from the Love of God.” This certainty builds courage and freedom and a willingness to love.” - Matthew Fox
- Dorothee Soelle
“If we as contemplatives are people who are growing in our realization of participation in divine life, then we are committed to giving up identifying the descriptive self (the old false self) and expanding in the faith and the daring to accept identification with they he true, transcendent self who dwells in God and in whom God dwells. When the sense of identity actually makes that shift in perspective, then the contemplative breakthrough or insight is present and full (spiritual transformation). Because of the nature of the divine life as creative agape, the contemplative life, which is a union with the divine life, must be creative. It is the nature and the vocation of the contemplative to create the world in the image of God, as an interchange of loving creative energies, and an ongoing process of ever- new improvisations.
”I am in God, and God is in me.”...We must avoid thinking of God as outside us, separate from us, and ourselves as outside and separate from God. The metaphysics of mutual indwelling outlaws this....Freedom on the personal, transcendent level, then, freedom that arises immediately and directly from the agent without provocation by the environment, is freedom that originates in the mutual interiority of God and the person. Realization of oneself as this kind of free agent is the necessary and proximate preparation for those energetic acts that will bond the free agents into a community “in Christ” and produce the new creation.”
- Beatrice Bruteau, The Grand Option: Personal Transformation and a New Creation
"I can find no place in St. John of the Cross where he affirms that God and the soul are in a process of becoming one, or that union is in the making; rather, he affirms that the whole of the contemplative movement is the process of realizing our oneness with God on ever-deepening levels. . As he says, man has numerous centers and unions, all of which must be passed through and left behind in order to reach the deepest, centermost union, which is the same union, but realized at its deepest level.
...In ending this discussion of contemplative union, I call attention to the fact that God does not communicate His/Her will to us on a conceptual basis. If He/She did, His/Her deepest union with human beings would be mental - a kind of union of intellects. But the center of our union is on a deeper level than mind or intellect. It is in the very center of existence, which I call the "will-to-God". This will is a silent faculty; it does not think, speak, remember, or form images. It is a silent power that takes its power from God, and in this silence our will runs into His/Her will, there to receive its life, strength - virtue. To know the will of God, we have only to remain silent, remain in the still center which automatically, without a single thought, is the perfect acceptance of the present moment, and what we are at the moment. Thus, all the intellectual searching, including the often agonizing efforts to ascertain the will of God, is nothing more than the refusal to accept the present moment, and our present state. The secret of the unitive life is the graced ability to live in this passive silence of wills, a silence which is always here now, and always one with God. The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication."
-Bernadette Roberts, The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center
”Needless to say, the popular notion that mystical experience and religion are separate entities is totally foreign to me. Christ’s revelation, “I am the Way and the Truth” allows no separation between the Way (means) and its end (Truth). Our end being transformation into Christ, when the Christian comes to the end of his journey there is the same truth he began with, only now unveiled in all its reality and marvel. The journey is one of gradual transformation, ever seeing and living more profoundly the Truth already with us. Truth was never somewhere beyond or down the road, it is always here and now, the means (Christ) being the end Itself.
-Bernadette Roberts, “Means-Ends” in The Christian Contemplative Journey: Essays on the Path
”The wholly extraordinary truth about the Christian proclamation is that each one of us, wherever we start from, is invited to open our consciousness fully to the consciousness of Christ, and, in that openness, to be taken out of ourselves, beyond ourselves, into that stream of conscious Love which flows between Christ and the Godself (our Trinitarian Creator). That is the personal destiny of each one of us and in that experience we are made completely and eternally real. The paradox is to know yourself for the first time because you are lost in God. That is what the gospel tells us, ‘Whoever would find their life must lose it.’ (Matt. 10:39).
Meditation/contemplation is a sure way of losing your own life, losing your own consciousness of yourself as an autonomously separate, separated entity. In losing it you find yourself at one with God and at one with all creation because you are now at last one with yourself. Your consciousness is no longer divided, no longer confused. It is simplified. It is one in God.”
- John Main, The Way of Unknowing
”Meister Eckhart promises that as our work for justice becomes more and grounded in our mystical roots of being-with-being, then true and profound creativity can happen...He says that the inner person “is hidden within us....Scripture calls this person a new person, a heavenly person, a young person, a friend, and a royal person”. He also teaches that the inner person is “the soil in which God has sown his likeness and image in which he sows the good seed, the roots of all wisdom, all skills, all virtues, all goodness — the
seed of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). The seed of the divine nature is God’s Son, the Word of God (Luke 8:11)”. This, for Eckhart, the true self or inner person is nothing less than the Cosmic Christ inside each of us. The inner person is “the good tree of which our Lord
says that it always bears good fruit and never evil fruit....All virtue of the just and every work of the just is nothing other than the Son
who is the New Creation — being born from the Father. In the depths of our being, where justice and work are done, we work one work and a New Creation with God”...We become co-creators and birthers of new creation.”
- Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ
”Thus, every created thing is a doorway to the Creator. Walt Whitman certainly knew this, and Thoreau and Emerson. Nature is a great teacher. We have come out of the womb of Mother Earth, which is an outer expression of the infinite Godhead. Infinity is within us and within all things, but not divided — eternally in Its perfect wholeness. Everything is within and perfectly connected to each other. It’s the perfect quantum hologram.
The question is: Is there a meta-theme that encapsulates all these experiences? The big theme and the transcendent theme is an ineffable oneness. Oneness.
If you have the ability to experience this state of consciousness, where you transcend space and time and materialism, you can encounter someone from another culture on Earth or another person from another planet or another realm, and rather than seeing them as “other,” you see them as “same.” This is very important, because the consciousness of ‘otherness’ is rooted in ignorance. Otherness is ignorance, whereas oneness is enlightenment.
If you can look at all beings and see that they’re awake and conscious, just as we are, you can experience your oneness with them. This is true no matter how different their intellect, body, emotional timbre, or fund of knowledge may be. All these things that we usually focus on are really ephemeral. If we look at the fact that they’re awake and experience that state of awareness where we see the transcendental value of the unbounded Mind, then we don’t see them as “alien” or “other.” And this is true whether you’re talking about someone from Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia or Alpha Centauri. It really doesn’t matter — because it’s another sentient, conscious being who has folded within his/her reality the awake-ness that is this universal aspect of our own selves.
If you can experience this state of Oneness, first of all, you can can communicate, which is very important. Secondly, you will feel that there is anything to be afraid of. Thirdly, you will see nothing to have a conflict over, because the things that are different really aren’t essential and aren’t important.
I think you could put the founders of every religion on Earth together and they’d have a grand old time, with, probably, no differences amongst them. It’s the divisions that men create, out of egotism, materialism, chauvinism, ignorance, hatred and stupidity, that cause the problems. The experience of Oneness (Divine Love) is the indispensable experience so needed at this time... It is the growing levels of Oneness... that grows perfect harmony, peace, and enlightenment.”
- Steven M. Greer, MD, Hidden Truth - Forbidden Knowledge
”Just as all of creation emanates from the fountain fullness of the Father and is modeled on the Son, creation finds its fulfillment in the Holy Spirit.
Thus, while all of creation realizes itself as image of the Trinity by growing to its fulfillment, it is the human person whose trinitarian image is Christ, who can lead creation to its fulfillment in God. Similarly, Teilhard held that the whole of natural evolution is coming under the influence of Christ, the physical center of the universe, through the free cooperation of human beings. God evolves the universe and brings it to its completion through the instrumentality of human beings. Thus, we are not called to relate to a God without a world. To love God we must also love what God loves. We are called to love this created world as God loves it. Both Teilhard and Bonaventure believed that the human person is called to be a “co-creator” — a cooperator with God in the transformation of the universe...”Therefore,it does matter what the human person does, for only through his or her action can one encounter God” (George Maloney, The Cosmic Christ: From Paul to Teilhard). We are to help transform this universe in Christ by seeing Christ in the universe and loving Christ at the heart of the universe.”
- Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution
”The mystic...has a consciousness of peace, compassion, tenderness, and forgiveness. As the mystic goes about the world urging all things toward unity, she or he contributes to evolution through a process of mystical convergence, seeing everything bound in a luminous web of love. Teilhard spoke of religious experience as having evolutionary significance through centration of the universe. What he means, Martin Laird writes, is that the human has the capacity to receive the Infinite: “The cultivation, development, and fulfillment of this capacity is a significant human contribution to cosmogenesis.” The fulfillment of this capacity centrates the rest of the universe because the unitive experience with God unites all spaces of separation in the outer universe by filling them with the presence of divine love. In this way, the human person becomes the vanguard of the evolving universe, drawn by Omega within and without. God-Omega exerts divine pull upon the universe through the human, who, as the evolutionary spearhead of the universe, has the greatest capacity to be pulled. The outer universe, therefore, is not the main impulse of evolution; it is the inner universe.
....The paths of the mystics show us that we have the capacity to be transformed into beings of new consciousness...as Beatrice Bruteau wrote: “The ‘I’ is God’s creative activity. It is not something in the past or something that is over and done with. It is God’s acting, God’s loving, in the present moment.” The “I” is the “now” of God’s creative love. We are not created and left to fend on our own. Our very existence is God’s own becoming—God rising in us. The truth of our selves lies in the mystery of God, as Catherine of Siena boldly proclaimed: “My me is God.” Thomas Merton wrote, “Our vocation is not simply to be but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our our own destiny....The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him.” To find God, we must look no further
than within ourselves, since God is within, “more inward than my inmost self,” as Augustine eloquently wrote.
....Teilhard held an integral connection between mysticism and evolution and thought that mysticism secures what is needed for the future. Mysticism is the most intense spiritual energy and thus the most intense energy of centration. The awakening of the mystic to the presence of the Sacred is the beginning of a new vision of reality....
Teilhard connects the act of faith with the centrating function of the human in the cosmos. The inner act of faith and the transformation of consciousness shape the outer movements of the mystic. According to Laird, “Far from escaping the evolutionary structures of the world, the mystic refines those structures. Through divinization the mystic has become a doorway through which Christ-Omega enters and transforms the world in the Divine Milieu.” This “inner-outer” transformation is the basis of human evolution and cosmic personalization. In other words, only inner transformation can escape outer cosmic entropy and thus centrate energy on higher levels of complexity. Through inner transformation, the mystic nurtures a zest for life by becoming more inwardly whole, creating wholeness in the outer world, and drawing others into new levels of community....”
Ilia Delio, A Hunger FOR Wholeness